[ **up: [[Breastfeeding (Chestfeeding)]] | [[Kinship]]** ] --- # Milk kinship > “Milk kinship is a designation which refers to social practices sharing the feature in which infants are breastfed by lactating women who are not their birth mothers.”[^1] > “Historically these practices were widespread in the Mediterranean, Arabian and Balkan regions, and among contemporary Shi’a and Sunni groups.”[^1] > “\[In Arabic culture, at] minimum, dyadic links of mother-child and siblings form through breastfeeding by the same woman.”[^2] However, > “When social ties are put to the test, proverbs affirm, those of consanguinity usually prevail […] as Arabs put it, ‘Blood is thicker than milk’ (Lane 1893:1097)”.[^3] > “… neither fosterage nor wet-nursing, although classified as milk kinship by some scholars, are to be considered kinship in Arab culture.”[^4] [^1]: Fadwa El Guindi, “Milk Kinship”, in *The International Encylopedia of Anthropology,* ed. Hilary Callan, (John Wiley & Sons, 2018), p. 1, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1358. [^2]: Fadwa El Guindi, “Milk Kinship”, in *The International Encylopedia of Anthropology,* pp. 1-2. [^3]: Peter Parkes, “Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend: When Milk Was Thicker than Blood?“, *Comparative Studies in Society and History*, vol. 46, no. 3 (July 2004), p. 587, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417504000271. [^4]: Fadwa El Guindi, “Milk Kinship”, in *The International Encylopedia of Anthropology,* p. 2.